Thursday, February 8, 2007

When I was a teenager, whiling away in my lonely purgatory and waiting 'til I could get the fuck out of St. Louis, I used to hang out at a record store called Vintage Vinyl. It was a small place back then with records everywhere, from the floor to the ceiling. The proprietors must have taken pity on me. Everyday I was in there looking through the stacks of used records, seeing what came in, what I had never heard, asking stupid questions, listening and learning. Most of the time I bought from the middle rack which was loosely Punk/New Wave. On the right side of the store was the Rock section; I also bought a lot of the records there. On the left side were the Jazz, Blues, R & B, and a very well stocked selection of Jamaican imports. I dabbled in all of these sections, but without exactly knowing what was what. Around the time I was sixteen or so, I started buying Jazz records. Mostly the obvious. Bird. Miles. Monk. One day, Lew Prince, one of the owners, foisted a James Moody album on me. I didn't know what it was, but I trusted his opinion and bought it. I took it home, played it, and felt like I'd been sold a bill of goods that wasn't for me. It sounded tame and a little boring. I was an ignorant kid trying to expand my horizons, but I wasn't gonna have any of this. So, having fewer scruples than cash I scratched the record and took it back. To this day, I feel guilty about this every time I listen to James Moody. So, Lew, if your reading this, I'm sorry and I think I get it now.